


Lullaby of Grace

by Cybra



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 06:05:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12426549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cybra/pseuds/Cybra
Summary: Webby's crying would've woken Scrooge up if he hadn't already been awake.  Seeing as how he's already up, he decides to step in so his housekeeper can sleep.





	Lullaby of Grace

**Author's Note:**

> I got challenged to write this, and I found a beautiful version of “Amazing Grace” in Scots Gaelic on YouTube. It seemed to fit. Also wanted to post up one last thing before my week-long vacation!
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** _Ducktales_ belongs to the Walt Disney Company.

If Scrooge hadn’t already been awake, the crying would’ve done the trick.  True, his room was quite far from the source so it would’ve been faint at best, but any noise out-of-place in the massive building had a tendency to jerk him into full wakefulness.  It was long-standing habit after he’d been betrayed in the Transvaal.

Tonight was one of the nights when too many regrets coupled with too much leftover energy from the day robbed him of his sleep.  He was always glad that his room was so far from Beakley’s when this happened so he could roam about without waking her up.  Like him, Beakley was typically a light sleeper.

Of course, that made the fact that the crying was continuing all the more concerning.  He knew his housekeeper had already had a lot on her plate with the mansion and him before adding a young child to her duties.  She’d claimed she could take care of it all with no issues, but it seemed she’d finally hit her limit and was too tired to even answer her granddaughter’s cries.

Before he’d even consciously acknowledged that, Scrooge had made the decision to let the woman sleep.  He was already wide awake.  If something was seriously wrong, then he could rouse her.

He slunk his way down the corridor as best he could, each movement torturously slow.  His bad leg ached at having to fully support his weight for longer than a second or two.  Still, if he managed not to wake Beakley, it’d be worth it.

Somehow, he managed to reach the door to Webby’s room without alerting the housekeeper.  (The woman must’ve been more tired than he’d previously thought.)  He slowly opened the door and slipped inside, softly shutting it behind him.

Though given that the shrieking coming from the child was loud enough to make a banshee scream for mercy, he supposed he could’ve slammed the door shut without Beakley ever noticing over the din.

“Now, now, lassie.  You’re safe,” the old man gently scolded the child. “There’s no need for all this fuss and bother.”

She looked up at him with teary reddened eyes, took a shuddering breath, and released another wail.

He instinctively reached up to clap his hands over his ears, the sound ricocheting around his skull like a ping-pong ball.  He shot a glance back towards the door, but Beakley didn’t appear.  How she managed to sleep through this racket, he’d never know.

“Shh shh shh shh!  Shush now,” he softly chided.  When she paused to whine and whimper, he released his hold on his ears and reached down to her. “Now then, let’s see what’s wrong.”

He could manage this without the housekeeper.  After all, he’d had two little sisters.  True, he hadn’t done much of tending to either of them as babies, but he’d done a little when his mother was otherwise occupied.  At the very least, he had practice with newborn calves during his time in the Badlands.  Same basic idea…though admittedly the calves needed a lot less than the average baby.

Getting a proper grip on her was a bit of a challenge.  She kept whining and wiggling in protest until he finally worked out what was comfortable for both of them while still being secure for her.  Fortunately, she didn’t feel wet, so a change of diaper wasn’t in order.  She sucked away on the abandoned pacifier he carefully retrieved from the crib to offer her and didn’t seem disappointed by the lack of formula, so she likely wasn’t hungry yet.

“You just wanted to be held, didn’t you?” he asked, bemused. “You wanted a little bit of attention, but everyone was ignoring you.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and he felt his feathers stand on end at the thought of her starting to howl again.

“Don’t you start that,” he told her, voice a tad sharper than he’d intended. “Your grandmother needs a break from the both of us.  You’ll wake her up for sure if you keep that up.”

She didn’t scream, but she did continue whimpering.  She raised her little hands up in an attempt to grab hold of him somehow.

He sighed and leaned his head down for a moment, allowing her to grab his spectacles as he used his beak to ruffle the feathers on her cheek a little.  She giggled and cooed happily, her earlier tears already forgotten.  He had no idea if what he was doing was what you were supposed to do with a baby (it likely wasn’t) but at least she wasn’t screaming.

After a minute or two, he lifted his head, shifting his grip to take his glasses from her and giving the child a skeptical look as Webby started mewling in dissatisfaction.  “I can’t let you play with my spectacles all night.  The last thing I want is for them to get broken by accident.”  He sighed.  “What we need is to settle you down.”

She gave another mewling cry which was interrupted by a yawn.

“That’s right.  Just go to sleep, lassie.  Things will seem much better in the morning.”

Unfortunately, reasoning with a small child was about as effective as cursing at an iceberg.  She whined and reached for his glasses again, but he placed them back on his beak and well out of range.

“Not wet, doesn’t seem to be hungry, and she’s not hurt,” he mused aloud, trying to narrow down what could be done and making a mental note to clean the smudges from his lenses at the first opportunity. “Think, McDuck.  What else might she need?”

From the depths of his memory emerged a cloudy image of his mother cradling one of his sisters (Matilda or Hortense, it didn’t matter which).  She was singing softly to the child in her arms, a soft melancholy tune like so many other lullabies.  Only he couldn’t hear the words and the melody evaded his best attempts at identifying it.

He sighed.  Well, at least it was something to try.

Only there was a significant issue with the plan:  His mind was drawing a blank on lullabies.  Not only could he not remember his mother’s singing that well, but he couldn’t for the life of him picture in his mind a single lyric from any other songs mothers sang to their children to send them to sleep.

Fortunately, a tune popped into his head that was soft and slow.  It wasn’t a lullaby but it would do in a pinch.

He took a deep breath before beginning to sing softly, “O Miorbhail gràis! nach breagh'an ceòl; 's e lorg mi 's mi air chall…”

* * *

Beakley hadn’t expected to find herself jerking awake from a dead sleep.  She looked about, momentarily disoriented, until a slow, haunting melody drifted its way into her ears.  The music, so out-of-place in the mansion, had been what had woken her up, and she looked to the baby monitor it came from.

“Air seachdran dorch', gun neart, gun treòir, 's a dh'fhosgail sùilean dall…”

The language was unfamiliar, but she easily recognized the tune.  Everyone heard “Amazing Grace” at least once in their lives.  It was arguably the most famous hymn in existence.

The voice singing was no professional, not by a long shot.  However, his voice (the owner was clearly male) carried a soft sincerity to it that encouraged her to simply lie there and listen.  However, she was already climbing out of bed, preparing herself for dealing with an intruder.  As her brain continued waking up, she realized that she knew that accented voice.

Carefully, she padded out into the hallway and slowly opened the door to Webby’s room.  Scrooge had his back to the door as he finished tucking the child in, continuing his soft singing to coax the girl into dreamland.  He completed both tasks and began creeping out the door, pausing when he saw her there.

She waved him out, and he followed her mute instruction, her closing the door behind him.

They stood in the hallway in total silence for several minutes as he removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with the edge of his robe before putting them back on his bill.

“I heard her crying,” he told her as if it explained everything.

To be honest, it did.  As a result, Beakley felt a small surge of affection for the man.  He had no responsibility to Webby outside of allowing her to stay in his home.  For him to try and calm her tears while letting Beakley sleep meant quite a bit, and for the first time the housekeeper wasn’t constantly worrying that she’d made some mistake in bringing her orphaned granddaughter to the mansion.

“She’s been sleeping regularly through the night lately,” Beakley said. “She must have had a nightmare.”

“Ah.  That would explain it.”  He turned down the hallway.  “Goodnight, Beakley.”

“Mr. McDuck?”

He twisted his body just enough to see her.

“Thank you,” she told him.

His beak twisted into a sad smile, but he said nothing.  Instead he turned and resumed his walk down the hall, disappearing into the darkness.


End file.
